1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to storage area networks.
2. Description of the Related Art
Storage area networks (SANs) are becoming extremely large. Some of the drivers behind this increase in size include server virtualization and mobility. With the advent of virtualized machines (VMs), the number of connected virtual host devices has increased dramatically, to the point of reaching scaling limits of the SAN. Classically Fibre Channel fabrics are limited in the number of domains, usually synonymous with switches, that can exist in the fabric, due to both addressing issues and stability issues. Fibre Channel routers were developed as a way to allow the overall SAN to grow larger without having to reach scale limits of any individual fabric.
The operation of the Fiber Channel routers is generally defined in various Fibre Channel specifications, such as FC-IFR, Rev. 1.06, dated May 12, 2010; FC-FS-3, Rev. 1.11, dated Oct. 22, 2010; FC-SW-5, Rev. 8.0, dated Nov. 22, 2006 and FC-LS-2, Rev. 2.00, dated Jun. 26, 2008, all from T11 and all incorporated herein by reference. A portion of the operations includes developing a table to identify which router port can access which fabric. Conventionally this table is a global table and contains information on all of the routers in the fabric. With the continuing growth of SANs, this table can become extremely large and thus a scaling concern itself. Certain efforts have been made to address the problem for particular SAN topologies, such as the use of LSAN zone binding by Brocade Communications, Systems, Inc., but other SAN topologies have not been addressed. Therefore there is a need to address router scaling issues in these other topologies.